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Waze Users Arrested After Navigation Reveals Their Massive Narcotics Stash

For ten people in Belgium, the police reports on Waze proved to be a double-edged sword, as the navigation app pointed a patrol car to a warehouse storing four tons of cocaine.
Ten men were arrested thanks to Waze navigation 8 photos
Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution/Walmart
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The crowdsourcing engine powering Waze allows users to send traffic reports for potholes, the location of police checks, accidents, and any other road incidents. The purpose of this system is to make every journey more predictable, but it’s not a secret that some drivers misuse traffic reports.

Two Dutch men were pulled over by the Belgium police in Ravels after being seen driving up and down a road several times. They looked suspicious, so the men were approached by police officers who requested their IDs and asked for more information about their destination.

After a quick check of the documents, the patrol officers discovered that both men had been involved in drug investigations, so they decided to take them into custody.

The officers then decided to search their vehicle and noticed that Waze navigation was running on a mobile device. After searching for the destination, they were eventually directed to a nearby warehouse where the two Dutch men, along with eight other individuals, were hiding no more, no less than four tons of narcotics.

Sure enough, relying on Waze for navigation certainly didn’t go as planned this time.

Most likely, the two men were using the application specifically to find the location of the police and avoid coming across patrol cars. What’s odd is that their car was seen driving up and down a road several times, so they were either transporting the narcotics to the warehouse or Waze malfunctioned at the worst possible time for them.

Waze is most of the time a handy navigation solution, as the crowdsourcing engine that powers its navigation allows the application to be up to date about what’s happening on the road. As such, drivers can also be prepared in advance to slow down when they come across accidents, potholes, or roadkill, for instance, while the application itself can generate faster routes and more accurate ETAs.

The support for reporting police, however, has long been considered a controversial capability. Law enforcement also asked users to avoid reporting the location of police cars on the map, as this feature helps criminals avoid their patrol vehicles, eventually defeating the purpose of their campaigns. Back in 2019, the NYPD itself asked Google to remove the police notification feature from Waze, but the search giant refused to comply with the request.

Some countries have enforced this restriction by passing laws that block applications from flagging the location of police traps. As such, the feature has already been removed from the app for local users, though some are turning to workarounds, such as starting a map chat, to inform other motorists about the patrol vehicle.
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About the author: Bogdan Popa
Bogdan Popa profile photo

Bogdan keeps an eye on how technology is taking over the car world. His long-term goals are buying an 18-wheeler because he needs more space for his kid’s toys, and convincing Google and Apple that Android Auto and CarPlay deserve at least as much attention as their phones.
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